Thursday, November 18, 2010

The countless individual techniques and practices I think are great (e.g. more extensive work experience)

It's important that Change The Future is not about me personally trying to indoctrinate the general public so that everyone agrees with me and makes schools like I think they should be.

(for a start, I am still naive to lots about how education is actually managed, beyond the walls of the school)

My fight is simply about actively involving young people in their education, not just being passengers in it.

I don't just mean choosing a module of shakespeare. Unfortunately the life they need to be prepared for will demand bigger choices of them.

They need to be allowed to really take control of their path, thinking about the directions they can go; trying to guess what the options are at the end of each road

(and will they have to perservere through a boring journey to get there? are the roads rough, rocky and dangerous?) they need to learn to lead themselves as well as recognise dysfunctional systems; not just automatically become a cog in them!

Life is full of difficult decisions

and loads of people are RUBBISH at making decisions; pretty much always 'cause of the same reason; they were Not allowed to (or encouraged to) make important decisions when they were younger.

(Also growing up with people who are rubbish at making decisions doesn't help... also being involved in other peoples' difficult decisions does help)

Parenting

Is obviously a massive part of how we are shaped (or mis shapen) as we grow up.

This is why schools need to drop the 'one size fits all' approach and realise that not all kids come from the same place. It IS the role of the school to help provide where parents fall short. It's not that hard!

For me, it was just getting a hug (and the odd wrestle) from my teachers (mostly the male ones probably, as I grew up without a dad and never realised how that probably affected me)

Thursday, November 11, 2010

I've just finished my own cut of the Millbank student protest. I would've finished it earlier, but I was frantically uploading stuff to Ch4, just a few minutes before the story aired on telly. Madness. Really need to get our own broadband soon and stop nicking the open Wifi from the house opposite :/

BROADCASTERS AND PAPERS: this footage is not available as News Access

I don't really feel like I've had time to reflect on the event... Didn't even have enough time for a shower last night (getting back home about 1am and working on the footage til about 6).

What's gonna change?

Obviously tuition fees will MASSIVELY rise; double or triple depending on where you study.

So that's really bad for students, but then as I understand, the paying back has been significantly improved for the student: only when you're on a decent wage - unless perhaps you live in London - 21k if I recall, do you then pay anything back.

I'm really struggling to get a clear before & after on the policy; can anyone help?

I feel a bit detached having just returned to UK politics from my 6 week documentary shoot..

Under the proposals, students will start repaying their loans at 9% of their income at a real rate of interest when they earn £21,000, up to inflation plus 3% for those earning £41,000 or more, with outstanding loans written off after 30 years.

Students who pay off their loans early could be hit with a financial penalty.

A UCU analysis concludes that a graduate earning the national average salary of £31,916 would have a 19.3% higher tax bill than colleagues who had not been to university, for the duration of their student loan repayments.

Teachers, police inspectors and doctors could see their bills rise by around a quarter, it claimed.

The British Medical Association said medical students would be left with debts of nearly £70,000.

o2 Think Big got back to me during the protest saying they're very interested in supporting us. If that happens I will SMILE.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

I also filmed charlie having a play (as a young person) on the DoE website; THE official website for education in the UK. You would have thought it'd be a bit more about young people...

Here's an example of a website that's not even specifically about young people (like education SHOULD be) and it's still 74 times more exciting.

www.wearewhatwedo.com

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I've been thinking a lot about The social network, how in a way, this is the most exciting part of this whole project, because it's kinda all in our heads, and there's every reason we'll create the next big thing and massively improve our education system forever. It's like being pregnant. I feel like...a pregnant man. Course it might all go tits up and be a £35 grand website that's only used by me and a couple of my mates who feel sorry for me.

Latest ideas

Facebook app
Or is it even an app? Something that can save you having to log in, it just pulls all your details out your FB profile (verifying your age and stuff). Also recognises your school - "would you like to review your school (or raise problems with it/suggest improvements/view what other people have put)?
It could also say which of your friends also went to your school and would you like to invite them to Change The Future?
It'd also promote CTF on your wall...

Google
One day we've got to partner with google... They also have a database of all the schools in the UK, so if Nick Gribb doesn't ever get back to me I'll give up and try google instead.
My dream is that the young peoples' school reviews will have an 'overral rating' which google applies (along with the conclusion from the review) to each school, so like, on Google maps, you can click a school, and similar to when you're searching for hostels or food places, you get a review pulled from Change The Future.

The thing is, either I'm completely deluded, or we really do need CTF, because school is fairly crap for most people, and it doesn't need to be that way.

For some it's a total trauma, but for most maybe, I think it's largely enjoyable at the time, often cause of friends but also you do obviously get a few amazing teachers who make all the difference...

BUT you still have those problems

You forget the vast majority of what you learn (almost immediately)

The vast majority of what you learn is not very relevant in your day to day life, or applicable to the things you want to do

There's so much we're passionate about and we would learn 10 times more if we were allowed to focus more on THOSE things rather than being forced to be 'well rounded' (basically be taught all the same stuff as the next person) ...Obviously it's good to have broad knowledge, but if it gets to the point where the student is switching off and doesn't relate to it at all and is forgetting it (even getting punished for distraction and restlessness) is it worth it?

School could be so much more fun. I really thought the purpose of life is to have fun. What's the best thing a good job and good income and good lifestyle can do for you, if not make you happy?? So why are we all obsessed with this idea that we have to endure loads of stuff we HATE in order to suddenly reach a place where everything's great and happy?!
Does that REALLY happen, or should we just start practicing doing what makes us happy before we forget how to do it anymore and get old and boring and locked into a lifestyle of crap we hate?

I just hope that there is some magical way that you can get student + exstudents who really don't give a shit right now, to start thinking about how good stuff COULD be in school, in their education... and see their education as a beautiful, powerful thing that can bring them everything they need to get where they wanna be, not this chore they just have to turn up to and deliver work to so they don't get in trouble.

I think there is a way, but I need to learn more about apathetic people and how to reach them.

Friday, November 5, 2010

One of our main supporters, Big Challenge, invited us to the houses of parliament where we met lots of other prize winners for this year and last year, did a bit of mingling and wandered about a pretty swish .....apartment(?) it was a very old beautiful sort of entertainment suite but had a fairly massive bed in one room, so I'm not sure.

ANYway, there were some pretty inspiring people there, and a heap of lords and baronesses as well as about 30 people working in goverment organisations.

Charlie and I split up so we could cover more ground and shake more hands, but in reality I spent most of my time trying to push other people out of the way of Tim Loughton, as he was pretty up our street working for the Dept for Education... Still waiting to hear back from Nick Gribb who he put us on to regarding getting hold of a database of schools across the UK...

Need to do a heap more fundraising. Probably looking into o2 think big next, there's some great stuff on there.

Also got a bit excited after Googling 'Fix the world' and stumbling across Wearewhatwedo; talking to them at the moment too. Hopefully we'll collaborate in some way. they're pretty overwhelmingly massive though.